Jake felt his heart drop into his stomach with shock as the metallic fragments fell away like falling raindrops. His eyes went wide in horror as Cassandra's eyes did the same. Before he could think of anything to say. The heavy sniper rifle splattered into the ground and Cassandra crouched down. She rested her elbows on her knees as she buried her face in her hands.
"Oh no. I told you. I confessed about…" He heard a hiccup from her. That forced him to start moving.
"Cass I can explain." He had been calling her Cass for the last week and all of today.
Suddenly she jumped up. Her wet eyes were ablaze with fury. "Explain what? How you lied to me all this time? Let me say all that stuff? You did it all on purpose, didn't you? Just to pick on me? To make a fool of me?" Tears welled at the bottom of her eyes then rolled down her muddy face. The fire went out of her eyes suddenly and she hiccuped again. Her eyes narrowing not in fury but as more tears started flowing.
"No!" He raised his hands as if he was going to grab her and she stepped back her shoulders shaking. Jake didn't know what to do. His mind raced for a solution to make things right. While for better or worse his mouth worked on its own. "I'm an idiot. When I saw you the first day I was so shocked. I didn't know what to say or do. I didn't want you to know it was me. I was embarrassed. Then by the time I thought to tell you. You had already said some things." She hiccupped louder seeming to know exactly what he meant.
"I'm sorry. So sorry. I'm an idiot. I really wasn't trying to be mean." His own shoulders slumped in defeat. As much as Cassandra had annoyed him in school. Cass had become a friend. Now he was afraid he was going to lose his second friend in the game. No, he admitted to himself probably his second actual friend period.
"When I told you about the boy in my class I liked?" She sniffled.
"You were talking about me?" She let out a gurgled sound almost as if in pain.
"Oh god." She dropped back down in a crouch and buried her face in her hands again.
For a moment Jake stared at her as she crouched down shaking as she silently cried in embarrassment. He didn't know what to do. Girls made him nervous, pretty ones more than most. It wasn't like he had a lot of experience with this kind of stuff. It wasn't like in a book… That thought brought a rush of different events from various books to his mind. Romantic moments between a hero and heroine. Could he do that? What was the worst that could happen?
He looked down and realized it couldn't be worse than how this was making him feel. Slowly he reached down, his gauntlets shrinking back to fingerless gloves. Taking her by the shoulder he gently pulled her up to stand. She didn't resist but didn't come eagerly either. Words escaped him so he did the only thing he could think of. He pulled her into a hug.
In his arms, Cassandra went completely stiff and he was sure he'd made a big mistake. Then the tension went out of her and her arms came up to hold him back. Unlike in the books they didn't stay embraced for long. She soon pulled back and looked down at herself before looking at him. "You are so filthy."
Jake looked down at his body covered in slowly congealing blood and the smear of it left on her. There was even a patch of it matted in her hair where her head had been against his chest. Feeling bad he started to apologize but instead, a burst of laughter came out.
Cass's eyes flashed with anger for a brief moment then she too burst out into soul cleansing laughter. Both seemed to feed off the other's laughter until they were left gasping for breath.
"I can't believe basically I confessed to you twice." Cass finally looked up at him. She was sitting on the ground and he was bent over with his hands on his knees as he gasped.
"Yeah. That was pretty awkward." Sucking in a breath he looked up. Leaning over as he was and with her sitting their faces were closer together than he expected. For a moment they stared into each other's eyes, an almost electric sensation between them. Then Cass jumped up suddenly almost smashing her forehead into his nose.
"There are showers at the tutorial hall!" Her voice was slightly high pitched.
"Uh yeah." Jakes's eyes went wide and his gaze dipped some.
"PERVERT!" Cass covered her chest. "Gah I can't believe I said you were better than the other boys. I mean we can get this mess off us."
Jake didn't have a good come back so just mumbled something as they headed towards the tutorial guild.
**********
Jake had wondered about the showers at the guildhall. It seemed weird since when he logged in he was clean. Even if he was dirty when he logged out. He came back into the lobby of the guildhall clean. It wasn't quite late enough to log out on a weekend. Plus now that things were out in the open, he didn't really want to log out. Jake was curious where things would go from there. In the past, he had disliked Cassandra and paid her little mind. But oddly enough the game had let them get to know each other enough that he found she wasn't so bad. Well, not the way she acted in game at least.
Out of the shower they cashed in their cores and started their Mutagen processing. Jake had insisted Cassandra take both the core and the mutagen from the boss. She could use the skill and would get the most use out of it. She had used a lot of bullets, actually all her remaining bullets, to kill the boss. Plus he still kinda felt bad about not coming clean sooner.
While they waited for the mutagen to process he paid a fee to have his helmet repaired. Then used the credits he had to upgrade his boots. Cassandra bought the basic boots having upgraded her HUD a second time instead of buying the boots previously. She needed to upgrade her HUD to learn a new active skill. After the heavy haul they had gotten from spending most of the day farming together she now was able to get not only the boots but the new skill.
Skill: Identify Weaknesses
Heavy Sniper Class Skill
Scan a target for a brief duration based on intelligence. Highlights critical weaknesses. Icon display color will range from White to Dark Red. White is the smallest damage multiplier while Dark Red is the largest. Success rate and Weakness indentation rate are modified by intelligence.
Cooldown Five Minutes
Requires Upgraded Heavy Sniper Interface.
Upgrading her interface had worked similarly to how his gloves had upgraded. A small cube was given to her that melded with the existing item. It expanded far beyond the original scope of the tiny cube. She now had headphones that covered both ears and wrapped around the back of her head. She explained that before there were earplugs for both ears. They had protected her hearing previously, this added to it.
When she bought the skill from the scrap heap robot Jake was surprised that instead of one of the capsules for injection. She received another small cube. It melted into the headset she now wore and didn't seem to do anything. Not from what he could see at least.
Cass looked at him and he noticed the flashing light projected into her left eye by the little wires next to it went wild. Cass looked him up and down then blushed some. "What?"
"Your um… crotch is an orange colored weakness." She said after a bit of hesitation.
"Hey! Don't scan me for weaknesses. And definitely don't scan that." His hand had moved to cover his crotch.
They were saved from the awkward moment by a ding as their mutagen finished processing. Jake had just finished injecting the last of his mutagen to unhappy ratios of absorption when a message popped up. For a moment he was excited that one of his attributes had finally ranked up.
[A party member has met the minimum requirements to leave the tutorial zone and enter one of the stage one areas. You do not meet the minimum requirements. Would you like to transition with your party member?]
"Hey. My intelligence is now C rank! It says I can move to stage one and will no longer log into the tutorial zone." Cass actually looked excited, considering she normally didn't care that much about mutagen or her attributes.
"Yeah. I got a message saying I don't meet the requirements but can basically piggyback with you to the next zone." His tone sounded annoyed. He had been farming since before she had started playing. She had given him almost all the strength mutagen they had collected all week. His attributes were all still D ranked. Opening his menu he double checked.
"Well, at least we can stay together. I wouldn't want to move to this other zone without you." Cass's face flushed. "I mean…" She paused then seemed to straighten some. "I mean I meant what I said." She gave him a weak smile that grew brighter when he smiled back.
Jake put his helmet back on, his distorted voice coming out of his mask. "Well, I guess no time like the present. Let us go see this stage one."